Due to the toxic materials employed, government regulation of businesses that perform electroplating is presently fairly stringent, and the regulations regarding emissions from electroplating facilities have increased the costs of doing business. As a result, many electroplating businesses have closed, and a significant portion of the electroplating work formerly performed by these businesses has migrated to foreign countries.
Conventional electroplating technology has employed and continues to employ toxic chemicals that are hazardous both to the workers carrying out the electroplating and to the environment. For example, various solutions for silver, gold and zinc electroplating have included sodium cyanide or other cyanide-containing compound. Acidification of such electroplating bath can result in generation of toxic hydrogen cyanide gas. Similarly, solutions having a chloride component can generate chlorine gas at the cathode.
Handling of spent solutions can also be problematic. Solutions containing heavy metals and other toxic chemicals may require special treatment before they can be safely disposed. Toxic chemicals remaining on the plated article may also present problems, as rinse water treatment may also be required.
Electroplating solutions usually include the plating metal ion in solution. For example, in U.S. Pat. No. Re. 35,513, one electroplating solution for electroplating of copper includes cuprous chloride, and a solution for plating of silver includes silver chloride. As a result, the plating solution can only be used for plating the metal for which it has been formulated. For example, a solution used for nickel plating cannot be used for copper plating. In addition, the level of plating metal ion must be monitored and supplemented from time to time in order to maintain the bath. The chemical tests required to maintain the desired balance in the bath are complicated and expensive, and only larger plating businesses are likely to have the necessary supplies, equipment and training to conduct them in house.
Current plating technology also frequently utilizes a plurality of baths for pretreating and plating, which may be specific to a particular plating metal and/or substrate metal. If the plater wishes to plate various different plating metals on various different substrate metals (“substrate metals” refer to metals on which the plating metal is plated, and does not indicate that the metal is common or impure), the number of solutions and baths that have to be maintained can be multiplied to the point that the plating operation becomes very costly and requires a large space. Smaller consumers of plating thus have been increasingly outsourcing their plating needs, with attendant increases in cost and time spent rather than dedicating the necessary resources for environmental compliance, testing, storage of plating solutions, changing of baths, and so forth.